


Dinner and a Show

by limmenel (elevenoclock)



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-19 16:52:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elevenoclock/pseuds/limmenel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter freezes. That’s Claude, leaning against that blue box, helping a pretty blonde step down. Claude, smiling, clean-shaven, <i>visible</i>.</p>
<p>(This takes place post-Season One of "Heroes", and in the middle of Season One of the Ninth Doctor. Written before S2 of "Heroes" aired.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dinner and a Show

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the DW Cross fic exchange in 2007 over on LiveJournal.

He stays in the shadows, watching. Listening. He finds that he can see better if he closes his eyes, if he stretches one of his newly acquired powers out and tilts his head to the side, hearing the world move around him. New York City is loud, even in the middle of the night, but he’s lived here his entire life, knows the city and knows how it works, like a watch with finely-crafted parts, cogs turning together to make the people and cars and din. 

It’s a late summer evening when he hears the noise. It’s loud, louder than anything else, and he buries his head in his hands and feels the pangs of it in his head, like the sound of the universe splitting apart. It whirs on and off for a few seconds, a lifetime, and then fades to silence.

Sylar stands from his hiding place in the shadows. He’s been patient, and now that patience is finally paying off, because that noise can only mean one thing:

It’s time to go hunting again.

[-]

Peter doesn’t talk much anymore. He wanders in and out of life, watching, and hovers on the surface. It doesn’t take much to remind him about what he almost did. He almost blew up seven million people. And if Nathan hadn’t been there, he would have, and he can’t help but be reminded every moment of every day about how that was entirely his fault.

He had a teacher once. He fought and pleaded and begged for Claude’s help, and in the end he lost it. The one person who could help him, and Peter thinks he should have worked harder while he still had the chance, should have let Claude help him, because now it’s too late. 

And, though he’ll never admit it to Nathan (who grows more worried about his younger brother with every passing day), he finds himself walking the streets in silence, hoping to hear or see an invisible man.

He goes out late in the day, when the sky is just starting to get dark. The city isn’t safe, but Peter’s learned the hard way that he can’t die. So he wanders, and watches the crowds of ignorant people headed home for the night, and hopes to see an invisible man pushing through them.

When he first hears the noise, he ignores it. It’s New York City, and Peter hears everything imaginable on a daily basis. It’s only after the sound fades, though, that he looks up, blinking against the darkness to see a funky blue box.

And he freezes, pulling invisibility around him like a cloak, because losing this moment would hurt too much.

Because that’s Claude, leaning against that blue box, helping a pretty blonde step down. Claude, smiling, clean-shaven, _visible_.

Peter smiles for the first time since that night in Kirby Plaza, and takes a step forward.

[-]

The Doctor helps Rose down from the TARDIS, and she strains her neck back to look up at the buildings around her, and the Empire State Building looks so much bigger and brighter in real life than in any show on the telly. She’s standing in the middle of New York City and, okay, it’s not the End of the World, but it’s still amazing.

There’s music from a street performer, rhythmic and lively, and people everywhere, walking, talking, moving. The Doctor takes her hand and starts to lead her down the street.

“There was a great little restaurant around here twenty years ago,” he says, grinning wide. “Let’s see if it’s still there.”

He offers his elbow, and Rose slips her hand into it, letting the Doctor lead her from the busy main streets and down avenues and side-streets that grow quieter and more quaint with every step.

She’s just thinking that this is perfect, that this is everything she thought it would be and more (“fantastic” as the Doctor would say), when everything changes in a split second.

Everything changes at once.

One minute, she’s turning to laugh and ask the Doctor a question, taking in the sights, and the next she finds that she can’t move, that she’s frozen in place by something she can’t see. 

“Rose.” The Doctor speaks, but she can’t turn her head to look at him. 

“I can’t move,” Rose says, fear creeping into her voice. This was supposed to be a normal trip, something easy and basic, because the Doctor had been surprised when she’d mentioned never going to New York in her own time. In and out, before they were back to seeing the universe, but of course nothing is normal when the Doctor is involved, as she’s quickly realizing.

“I know,” comes the reply, not sounding particularly worried. 

Then a man steps out of the shadows and walks towards them.

“Which one of you is it?” he asks. His eyes look over her like she’s a piece of meat, and Rose feels her skin crawling, even though there’s nothing lustful in the gaze. “Not you,” he says, meeting her eyes. With the flick of a hand, Rose finds her back slammed against the TARDIS, and clenches her eyes shut in pain, though she still can’t move away from the wood pressing into her back.

By the time she manages to open her eyes again, the man’s moved to stand in front of the Doctor. His head is tilted to the side, and his face is puzzled. “Two heartbeats?” he asks. “So it’s you, then.” He leans forward to meet the Doctor’s eyes, then says, “What is it, I wonder, that makes you tick?”

He raises his hand, one finger stretched out, and points it at the Doctor’s temple. There’s a pause that stretches for an eternity, and then the Doctor makes a sound of pain in the back of his throat, and a drop of blood appears, dripping down over his eye.

It’s the noise that makes Rose’s blood freeze in her veins, because she’s never heard him make a sound like that, and there’s nothing either of them can do to help.

A trickle of blood begins to wind it’s way down the Doctor’s skin, and a deep cut begins to appear across his forehead before the man who attacked them is suddenly, violently thrown a few meters away. The Doctor staggers backwards, free from his unseen bonds, and quickly composes himself, wiping the blood from his face. Rose sags against the TARDIS, finally able to move once again, and quickly pushes herself away from the area.

Their attacker stands up and dusts himself off calmly. 

“Peter Petrelli,” he says, eyes searching through the empty street. He smirks, focusing on the thin air a few feet to Rose’s left. “I know you’re there, Peter Petrelli. It’s been a while since our last meeting, hasn’t it? But, you couldn’t defeat me then, so what makes you think you can now?”

Rose spares a moment to wonder if the man’s a crazy alien or something, but then the air that he’s staring at shimmers and another man appears.

Peter (she assumes that’s what his name is, at least) meets her eyes for a split second, and his expression is reassuring. Then he turns to look at the Doctor, and smiles wide with recognition. The smile fades, however, when the Doctor doesn’t return the look with anything more than a hint of confusion.

“Not him,” Peter says, still staring at the Doctor. He finally pulls his gaze away and turns to the man who attacked them. “Back off, Sylar. Go find another hunt. This one’s not for you.”

Sylar’s smirk doesn’t fade. “I think otherwise,” he says.

And the fight is on.

Peter takes a step forward and lifts his hand, fingers splayed open. A trash can on the side of the street rises and is flung towards Sylar, who raises his own hand and stops it in mid-air at the last second, waving casually to toss it aside.

The fight is fast-paced and vicious, the two of them flinging things at each other. Peter slips in and out of visibility, trying to hide and get the upper hand, but Sylar always seems to know exactly where he is somehow. 

From start to finish, the entire fight probably only takes a few minutes, but it feels like an eternity to Rose. She sits with her back against a wall, trying to keep out of the way, the Doctor close enough to her to wrap an arm around her shoulder. He looks more like he’s watching a football match, not a fight between two strangers over his life.

Rose wants to move. She wants to crawl away and escape before they notice her. But the Doctor is watching the fight without any sign of worry, and he’s never deliberately put her in danger before. He doesn’t even seem to notice the cut on his head, slowly beginning to clot, so entranced is he by the fighting.

Peter has several tricks up his sleeve, but Rose thinks that Sylar knows them all. She finds the fear slowly fading, awe replacing it, as Sylar stretches out a hand and the dumpster that Peter is perched upon (knocked over sideways during the fight) melts out beneath him into a puddle of liquid. Instead of falling, though, Peter, merely lets the box disappear from beneath him and stands, hovering in mid-air, feet still resting where the metal once was.

It’s almost like a game between them for a few minutes, until Sylar holds a hand out and light begins to flicker in his palm.

“Are you suicidal?” Peter asks, fear laced with the anger in his tone. “You’ll kill us all!”

Sylar doesn’t seem worried, but the light in his hand vanishes nonetheless. “Just because you can’t control it doesn’t mean I can’t,” he says, but Peter’s warning seems to have made an impact, and he doesn’t try the light trick again. 

The two of them are equally matched, from what Rose can tell, neither of them able to land a significant blow to the other. They’re able to dodge and block whatever’s thrown at them; even Peter’s ability to fly or turn invisible and Sylar’s trick with melting metal and how he always seems to know exactly where Peter is don’t seem to be enough to help them.

The fight would go on for hours, she’s sure, except Sylar gets lucky and a broken beer bottle gets past Peter’s defense, stabbing into his stomach. It happens so quickly that Rose doesn’t realize what had happened until she sees the shine of brown glass against Peter’s shirt. She gasps, leaning forward instinctively, but the Doctor’s arm on her shoulder holds her back.

“This is familiar,” Sylar says, superior, taking several steps forward as Peter keels forward from the pain.

This must be the end, Rose thinks. Peter’s mortally wounded, and there’s no way he’ll recover from this. Sylar will kill him, then turn around and kill them, too.

Sure enough, Sylar begins to walk closer. “I can’t wait to see what’s inside that amazing brain of yours,” he says.

As soon as he moves within reach, Peter lashes out, swinging his arm in an arc. It catches Sylar in the face and snaps his head to the side, knocking him off his feet. Then he stands, pulling the glass out of his stomach, and Rose can see the blood stain on his shirt, spreading slowly. It doesn’t seem to bother Peter, though.

Before Sylar can stand again, Peter kicks him. Hard. Rose can hear the whoosh of air leaving Sylar’s lungs as the kick meets his gut, and his body skids backwards along the pavement.

As Rose watches, Sylar pushes himself up, clearly in a lot of pain, and sends the closest object to him (a newspaper stand) flying, metal tearing off the cement. Instead of blocking it, Peter dodges neatly, shooting up into the air. He hovers for a moment, the newspaper stand crashing into the spot he was previously occupying, then lands easily next to it.

“I think the show’s just about over,” the Doctor says in a lowered voice.

He’s right. Sylar picks himself up, glaring at Peter, and cradles his arm against his stomach. “This isn’t over,” he says.

“Yes,” Peter says, “it is.”

Sylar looks like he’s about to say something, but he turns to look at the Doctor and Rose, instead, eyes taking them in. “You won’t always be there to protect them,” he says. Before Peter can reply, he’s gone, slipping down a side-street and vanishing into the night.

Peter takes a step forward, ready to chase him, then stops. His shoulders slump forward, and he suddenly looks exhausted, worn out. He turns around, looking at Rose and the Doctor, and smiles tightly. “You’re safe now,” he says. 

The Doctor stands, offering a hand to Rose to help her up, then turns to grin at Peter in return. 

“Thank you,” Rose says for both of them. She gestures towards his stomach, hesitantly asking, “Are you alright?”

“Oh, this?” Peter pokes at the bloody whole in his shirt, and Rose can see unbroken skin beneath it. “Yeah, no big deal. And you’re both okay?”

“We are,” the Doctor answers. “And we have you to thank for that.”

Peter meets his eyes. “It was nothing,” he says. He doesn’t look away, though, and instead raises two fingers to his temple absentmindedly, rubbing lightly. His face goes from exhausted to devastated in a split second, and the emotion is gone just as quickly. “You’re not him,” he says quietly.

The Doctor smiles sadly. “No, I’m not,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Peter says, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I should go, make sure Sylar’s definitely gone. Sorry again.”

He turns to go, but the Doctor steps forward quickly, grabbing his arm before Peter can vanish. “Don’t give up looking for him,” he says.

Peter pauses for a second, then smiles, a genuine smile even though it doesn’t fully reach his eyes. “I won’t,” he says. “Enjoy your evening.” He slips out of the Doctor’s grasp, and vanishes before their eyes.

Rose gets the feeling that she just missed something important, but the Doctor is taking her hand and grinning, leading her away, and she files her questions away for another time. There’s a city to see, a fantastic restaurant to eat at, and all the time in the universe to get her answers.


End file.
